On a farm near the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century, a slave rebellion kills three and leaves eleven others condemned to death. The rebellion’s leader, Galant, was raised alongside the boys who would become his masters. His first victim, Nicholas van der Merwe, might have been his brother.As the many layers of Andre Brink’s novel unfold, it becomes clear that the violent uprising is as much a culmination of family tensions as it is an outcry against the oppression of slavery.Spanning three generations and narrated in the voices of both the living and the dead, A Chain of Voices is reminiscent of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!; it is a beautiful and haunting illustration of racism’s plague on South Africa.

Chain of Voices

Literature & Fiction

Brink, André

Genre Fiction

Flamingo

Banned for many years in the author's native South Africa, Looking On Darkness tells the story of black actor Joseph Malan as he awaits execution for the murder of his white lover.

Looking On Darkness

Fontana Paperbacks

The year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas&’s final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master&’s vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother&’s funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death. Then he flees to South Africa&’s veld. There he comes to the rescue of Elizabeth, a white woman, and the only person to survive her husband&’s expedition in the vast South African interior. Alone and terrified, she pleads with the runaway slave to bring her back to the Cape and her home. Adam agrees because he believes by rescuing Elizabeth, he will be awarded his own freedom. & &This, then is the stunning story of their trek together, how they find in each other their mutual need and humanity, and finally how their days together turn into an unforgettable, tender love story. &&Shortlisted for the 1976 Booker Prize&

Instant In the Wind

RUMOURS OF RAIN (FLAMINGO)

Contemporary

As startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality. Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies—until the sudden arrest and subsequent "suicide" of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair—a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

A Dry White Season (Flamingo S.)

Helping to research her lover's film on the great plague, Andrea returns to Provence. Travelling with Mandia, a fellow South African and Black activist, helps Andrea put into perspective the more hedonistic elements of her new life. As the story unfolds in a landscape evoked with a breathtaking mastery, Andrea and Mandia confront the uneasy relationships which develop between themselves and their lovers. Their difficulties form an allegory for those faced by two disparate continents, as they undertake the process of reconciling Europe's past and Africa's present.

The Wall of the Plague

HarperCollins, Publishers

Two men, the ambassador from South Africa to France and a young attache in the embassy, both fall in love with the same woman, in this novel of obsession, passion, and politics

The Ambassador

Three stories set against a series of documentary accounts of South African politics and current affairs since 1985. It is constructed as a patchwork of opinion, fiction and history which develops to an emotional climax by this prize-winning author.

States of Emergency

As startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality. 
Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies—until the sudden arrest and subsequent "suicide" of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair—a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

A Dry White Season

Dramas & Plays

William Morrow Paperbacks

Ruben Oliver's life is coming adrift from its moorings. He has been obliged to take early retirement from his job as a librarian due to 'rationalisation' and the new political realities of South Africa. His wife has died. One of his sons has settled in Australia, the other is about to emigrate to Canada while trying to persuade Ruben that it is too dangerous to remain. The only constants are his old family home, haunted by the ghost of a young slave woman; and his housekeeper, Magrieta, with whom he has a shared history that goes back more than half his life. When Tessa Butler comes out of the rain one night in response to an advertisement for a lodger, Ruben is captivated by her. She restores passion to his life, but brings with her a turbulent past.

The Rights of Desire

Harcourt Trade Publishers

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